While all of your friends might be doing it, don’t fall into the trap of getting into a relationship. Sure it seems like the right thing to do, but your 20s are entirely too crucial for your personal growth for you to be focusing on fulfilling the wishes of another individual. Not only does it make you complacent with where you are in life, but it makes your boring. When your business is at stake and your future is resting on your shoulders, the last thing you need is to be bogged down by an insecure lover rushing you home.

Also:

Expensive women and cheap thrills coupled with the expensive sneakers should not be on the list of your needs. Setting the foundation for your business and team is far more important than updating your wardrobe and chasing sex. Distinguish between what you want and what you actually need. Make sure your priorities are in tact or you will lose your track.

Oh, my.

You say you want to make some mistakes? I’ve got twenty you can make right now. I noticed that there were a lot of really sexy pictures accompanying Adam’s article so I built those in too.

1. Get on a train, or a subway car, or whatever mode of transportation you have where you are. Ride. Just ride it until it stops. Ride for hours. You will not like the experience. It will not be what they call “fun.” But you’ll see the sun come up, or the sun go down, and you’ll feel a sense of vastness. Then you’ll turn around, and go home and wonder why you ever did that. It was so you can know what it feels like to go home. It’s still dumb, though; don’t spend $2.50 on a metrocard for that.

2. Give witchcraft one last shot. Yeah, sure, it’s going to be disappointing. This is going to end in heartbreak, again, like it always does. You’re never going to summon Beetlejuice. He’s not a restaurant host. But, dude, what if it works? It never works. (But what if it does?)

3. Steal a golf cart. From anyplace. Once I tried to steal a golf cart from Sir Ivan’s Castle, where apparently “The bathrooms were dusted with glitter and cocaine residue.“ I wouldn’t know about that, but I do know that Ivan owned fifty golf carts and there were keys in them. I thought, “Maybe I could actually do this.” I thought maybe no one would notice. Obviously this was a mistake, and one that could be possibly classified as auto theft. I’m not sure, I don’t watch those Fast and Furious movies. This mistake wasn’t even remotely successful. A security guard stopped me as soon as I was in the golf cart about to make my getaway. I kind of tried to play it off like I was not fully intending to take this golf cart and ride it as far as it would go, onto the open road, into the glittering night. Now, I pray only that you will succeed where I failed.

4. Truman Capote said that going to Venice was like eating an entire box of chocolates all in one go. Was that Truman? Sounds like him. Anyhow, going to Venice is pretty great. You should try eating an entire box of chocolates all in one go. See how that works out.

5. Just ascribe everything you feel like saying to Truman Capote. Seriously, anything you want to say, just claim you’re “pretty sure” Truman Capote said it, or that it “sounds like him.” He alienated everyone, so no one is ever, ever going to call you on it, unless you give yourself away.

Thank you for starting this post with a picture from Auntie Mame. Gloria Upson is just amazing. I always wonder what it would be like to be friends with Gloria and and Muriel Puce at the club. I swear it would be just ghastly. Sorry, it’s so rare I get to quote this movie anywhere and people get it (OK maybe no one will get it here either, but it’s closer than I usually am.)

Great list though. I especially love number 20.

http://twitter.com/JenAshleyWright Jennifer Wright

This is so weird, but I actually always feel TERRIBLE for Gloria Upson. I have been at country clubs where that story about stepping on the ball actually would have gone over pretty well. And it has the ingredients of a good story – there’s a climax, and she can use funny hand gestures, and it’s self deprecating and she’s using it to try to defuse an awkward situation at a party. NO ONE ELSE READS IT THIS WAY – but I always listen to that story and think that some of her instincts as a human are good, it’s just that her life experiences are non-existent, and her parents are terrible. I think if she could get away from them for about ten minutes (or, you know, a year in Europe on her own) she’d end up being a pretty okay sort of person.

Lauren

As someone who has never actually been to a club except for in my fantasies, I have always been fascinated with Gloria. I grew up in Fairfield County Connecticut but my parents are from Brooklyn and The Bronx so they always steered me away from going to the clubs with my friends. I always imagined my club going experiences to be exactly how they are described in Auntie Mame and I had a friend named Muriel who was (and still is for that matter) exactly who I imagine Muriel Puce to be. That’s not why I was friend with her though, we were friends through ballet class. And every time I talked about her one of my parents would say “What’s wrong with Muriel Puce?” I feel like this one paragraph has opened my eyes up to the really weird reality that was my childhood. Crap.

I never imagined Gloria’s future, but I can see it the way you describe. I can also see her becoming Betty Draper. Let’s go with your description.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=52200729 Tekoa S. Smith

LOL at the poor plant. “He’ll be dead in three days.” I’m dead from laughing. Great stuff.

http://www.schonwan.com/ Jan Li

lol. That is indeed a little interest. But the truth is that people can survive understand different conditions, right?

Lastango

That’s an awsome list! In his book “Iberia: Spanish travels and reflections”, James Michener says that:
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“I cannot remember how I discovered my technique for exploring a strange land, for I have followed this procedure for as long as I can recall. I enter the country unannounced and without a letter to anyone. I stand back and look at the scene before me, talk with anyone who cares to talk to me, then go to the bus station and buy a ticket for the end of any random line. This drops me in some village out in the country, and there I spend a couple of days just sitting and looking and talking. This produces some very dull days, but also some memorable ones.”
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Someone posted that, together with several other good snips from the book at

Most of Michener’s work is fiction, but “Iberia” is not. It’s a great read.

One other mistake for your twenties: take up a pursuit you are ill-suited for, spend a ton of time and money on it, and refuse to give up until reality has finally mauled you. Ferinstance, say you aren’t musical but you don’t know that yet. You sure would love to play, and desire counts for a lot, right? Buy a guitar, and try to learn. Spend money on lessons. Fail. Guitars are a challenging instrument, but you’ve noticed you’re pretty fast on the computer keyboard. Maybe you’d be better on the piano! Buy a piano, spend $$$, play for an hour a day for five years — time when you could have been doing something else — until, one day, you listen to a recording of yourself playing a simple piece. Then you close the keyboard forever. But… but… on a piano there’s a lot going on. Maybe that’s the problem. What if it was just one note at a time, like on a flute or a recorder. That way, maybe you could tap into your musicality, and come back to the piano after your sense of rhythm improves…

Nora

You write suuuch good articles. So damn funny! and #20 was just plain beautiful. Rock on!

ash

This is almost as bat shit insane as the original, but intentionally funny, which is nice. I read the EliteDaily list earlier this week and almost sent it in to you.

Also, I have that same plant and it is not yet dead! That sturdy little fucker has been with me for almost 6 months now. I have faith in you, unless you just want to kill it for fun.

Kristen H.

Yes.

Janika Moravskoslezský-Carter

Great list.

http://www.schonwan.com/ Jan Li

Something there I think should not be mistakes, because most of the people sometimes will do that

Janika Moravskoslezský-Carter

We live and we learn. Without mistakes we wouldn’t learn.

http://www.schonwan.com/ Jan Li

Jonika, right, we need to improve ourseves in a progress of learning.

Janika Moravskoslezský-Carter

One must remember, it takes some longer to than others. also have those who don’t learn at all.

I just read the original article and it’s crazy. But then I read the author’s profile and it said this: “Adam Hayes gives readers a unique look into the world of sports. The former rugby and track star left his life of adult films to pursue writing” So this guy presumably spent his 20s in adult films….. explains a lot!